Our company (Biotech / Manufacturing) is getting ready to embark on an ERP implementation. We're currently at about 150 users and poised for a fair amount growth over the next couple years, potentially doubling our revenue. We have two manufacturing facilities currently. We're utilizing Hyper-V / Hyper-V Replica today, which has been meeting our needs so far.

Long story short, we still currently rely heavily on paper - a lot of our business and manufacturing processes user paper documents and records throughout. We also have some miscellaneous electronic systems (Finance, Inventory, Document Management, Salesforce, Electronic Maintenance), etc., but few are integrated (or integrated well) with each other. The solution we are looking at will aim to replace the current systems and offer a single database for main business areas such as Finance, Purchasing, CRM, Manufacturing, Quality, Maintenance, Shop Floor Tracking, Inventory Barcoding, Document Management etc. The system will also support some specific compliance functions needed for our industry.

My question here is this - does anyone have any tips for planning the required server hardware for an implementation like this? We want to make sure we purchase enough in the areas of RAM, CPU and storage to serve the current needs while still giving us room to expand. Coming from so much paper, we don't have a lot to benchmark this with. Our current servers host the applications mentioned above as well as the standard DC / DNS / File Server, etc., but I don't feel as those things offer any insight as to what we might need here. We're also going to need to purchase and setup SQL server, as the current applications utilize SQL Express.

Additionally, if you were building a system like this from scratch, would you be looking into Hyper-Converged Infrastructure? Would you look to combine all of the systems that will remain along with the new systems onto one server platform? Or would you want dedicated hardware for something like this? Our company is open to spending the necessary funds to get a high quality, redundant system in place. I plan on leveraging the ERP vendor for as much information as possible, but wanted to get the community's feedback as well.

6 Replies

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Definitely virtualize if the ERP vendor supports this. Get as much bang for the buck as you can in regard to your Hyper-V hosts in regards to memory and processing power. Almost certainly have more than one host to spread some processes across servers.

Storage is going to be a big consideration if you are looking to grow the business so get something that can easily be expanded to meet future needs. I have a DELL SAS array that I can stack up to 8 additional MD1200s onto when needed.

You may want to get with management and see how available all of this infrastructure needs to be and how much downtime they can handle amd plan accordingly.

This person is a verified professional.

Definitely virtualize if the ERP vendor supports this. Get as much bang for the buck as you can in regard to your Hyper-V hosts in regards to memory and processing power. Almost certainly have more than one host to spread some processes across servers.

Storage is going to be a big consideration if you are looking to grow the business so get something that can easily be expanded to meet future needs. I have a DELL SAS array that I can stack up to 8 additional MD1200s onto when needed.

You may want to get with management and see how available all of this infrastructure needs to be and how much downtime they can handle amd plan accordingly.

Thanks Rockn,

Definitely plan on virtualizing. I agree, storage is a big consideration. Our current servers are a couple years old at this point, so we're looking to purchase new hardware.

In terms of downtime, obviously the goal is "as little as possible", but we tried to build around a 4-8 hour recovery prior to this project. Back then, the manufacturing process wouldn't necessarily stop due to an IT failure. But now, with so many of the business functions being digitized with this project, we're going to want to decrease that number even more and will have to come up with a concrete number to target.

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HyperConverged IS nice. Scale has some really nice options, and it's modular, so if you find you need to add more power, you can add more nodes. It's biggest selling point is the ease in which you can do this, and manage everything.

Otherwise, multiple systems with VERY fast storage, like all-flash, or high-speed drives with a flash front-end... probably utilizing a SAN or two and designed for HA failover.

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Is there a larger plan for how to handle your infrastructure? ERP can be just one of the workloads that is supported by a virtualization platform.

Yes, I would look at HCI, especially from VMware. You can have two or 3 single processor servers, load them up with disk/SSD, and get a well supported platform at reasonable price. VMware will only charge you per socket, so if you add 4 TB of SSD to your existing hosts you only pay for the flash at server hardware markup, not storage hardware markup. :-)

User reviews on the various options in this category can help give oyu insight into the various ways it can help your business. As a nexample, one of the users on our website reviewed NetApp HCI and had the following to say: "It has automated a lot of workloads. It has automated us from ticketing a large number to a very small number. Our legacy environment with the application base has improved. It also helps us with self-healing technology, which HCI is good for." You can read the full review here: https://www.itcentralstation.com/product_reviews/netapp-hci-review-53126-by-manager3128/tzd/c800-sf-...

This is just one of the reviews - there are many others to browse through, which could help you with making your decision.

Not sure if you've looked at any resources from HPE on any of your needs but if not, you can start here for more information on their products if that's something you're interested in taking a look at. Additionally, I'm tagging in my HPE contacts in case you have any other questions and to see if they have any specific recommendations based on the info you provided. Feel free to reach out to me directly as well and I'd be happy to assist!